


tester

by stardustgirl



Series: AU of an AU [8]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: (its a headcanon I’ve had for a while and well), (its now canon in this AU at least), (kind of), (well 17ish), (well it’s not necessarily non-consensual but I wouldn’t say it’s consensual either), AU of an AU, Angst, Ezra Bridger Needs a Hug, Ezra Uses Spice, Ezra’s 17 in this, Ezra’s got a horrible past, He’s not completely sure, Imperial AU, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Drug Use by Minors, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Sick Ezra Bridger, So much angst, and neither am i, but it’s even worse in this, lowkey Imperial Ezra, lowkey Pro-Empire Ezra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 15:04:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16244114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustgirl/pseuds/stardustgirl
Summary: And if he’d purposely flunked the entrance exams for the Academy, then so what? He had nothing against the Empire; sure the system was a bit flawed, but what system wasn’t?|~~~|Ezra doesn’t like what he has to do to comply with the system.  But it could be a lot worse.  So he does it.





	tester

**Author's Note:**

> Rip Ezra  
> He always has a bad past (especially in my AUs).
> 
> TW: Implied/Referenced drug use by minors (not necessarily by their consent either..)

He walked along the street, eyes down and hands shoved into his jacket pockets. There was a ‘trooper supervising at a distance, he knew, but even the Empire turned a blind eye to certain things.  
Slipping down a side street, Ezra exhaled slowly as he approached the back door to one of the buildings.  
The stormtrooper followed but remained at the entrance of the alley. It was a dead end, and both of them knew it.  
He knocked on the door and stepped back, crossing his arms and shooting the ‘trooper a glance as the door opened. Quickly he dropped his gaze and stepped inside.

When he emerged several hours later, the ‘trooper had already changed shifts with another. The new one gestured for Ezra to follow and he did silently, trying to ignore the way the walls of the alley were slightly warping now. He and the ‘trooper returned to the Imperial Complex and he entered the Care Systems building without complaint.  
He headed to the med bay without prompting, sitting on the examination table silently as the ‘trooper waited outside. Ezra slipped off one glove and a sleeve of his jacket, pushing up his sleeve as a med droid entered and held out a pulse oximeter, clipping it onto his gloveless hand as it fastened a blood pressure cuff onto him. He inhaled shakily and closed his eyes, breathing out slowly as the droid continued taking his vitals.  
“How do you feel?” it asked him after a half hour of taking his vitals. He shrugged.  
“Pretty dead,” he remarked, rubbing his eye. The droid whirred softly as it recorded the data into its memory banks. It was an older model, one of the ones that still made noise if it was recording information while almost full.  
“What about the drug? How has it affected you in the past few hours?”  
He sighed, releasing another shaky breath. “Um, at first I couldn’t see super well. And when I did, it was all...blurred. Blurry colors everywhere; everything was kind of bright. That wore off after an hour or two I think. Now, everything’s just...painful.” Even as he said this, he picked at the sleeve of his jacket as if tempted to remove it.  
The droid whirred again before continuing to question him. Thankfully, it changed lines of questioning; it was his first time using this one so it wouldn’t ask more specific questions until the next time.  
“How does this drug compare to your experiences with others?”  
“In general? I don’t know. Seems pretty bad if it’s meant for rec’ use.” Ezra shrugged again.  
“How does it compare to your experiences with Corellian Spice specifically?”  
“A lot worse,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “The rec’ part only lasted for a couple hours with this one.”  
“Ryll?”  
“The colors were a lot brighter than with ryll.” He sighed again, yawning.  
The droid continued to question him until he could barely keep his eyes open and it finally relinquished him back to the waiting ‘trooper outside. The man escorted the teen back to his room, which was gratefully empty at the moment. He barely made it to “his” bed at the far end of the room before crashing onto it, almost immediately falling unconscious.

“Is he awake?”  
“No, looks like he’s out. Like he’s been out a wh—“  
“Quick, someone grab his bag.”  
Ezra kicked out before even opening his eyes, his foot catching someone in the gut if the cry of pain was any indication. He sat up slowly, glaring around at the group of slightly younger teens who immediately flinched away from him.  
“What was that, Marcco? I don’t think I heard you right, because I could’ve sworn I heard you tell someone to take my bag.” He narrowed his eyes at the teenager who, to his credit, swallowed and blinked before staring right back.  
Finally the boy looked down, scuffing his foot on the duracrete floor. “It was nothing, Ezra.”  
“That’s what I thought. Now leave me alone.” He laid back down, headache only getting worse the longer he stayed awake. He heard shuffling as the group of boys slowly dispersed, followed by creaks as they reached their beds and sat.  
The cot was itching him and he rolled over, face contorting in pain at the movement. The pain was the worst part of testing the newer drugs, before they’d worked out the flaws in the formula.  
Not that he had any say about it.  
He turned over again, squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to get the pain to disappear.  
“What’d you test today?” someone from across the room called.  
“They’re calling it LS-301 until it gets approved,” he answered through gritted teeth. Ezra rolled over again, facing the wall as someone asked another question.  
“First trial?”  
“Yeah. Now leave me alone.”  
The questions stopped and the others returned to speaking quietly amongst themselves as he shuddered, rolling over again as the cot creaked dangerously beneath him.  
This wasn’t the first time he’d been the one doing the very first trial for a drug, and it wasn’t the first time it was off the books—a scant few of the younger testers’ trials ever made it into official records, and if they did, they were generally deleted soon after. It also wasn’t the worst trial run he’d done. But being one of the testers was better than any of the other options, and he considered himself lucky that he had still gotten a choice despite his eyes. And if he’d purposely flunked the entrance exams for the Academy, then so what? He had nothing against the Empire; sure the system was a bit flawed, but what system wasn’t? He just didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in the military or the bureaucracy. Once he was out of Care Systems, he could do anything he wanted. Go offworld and search for his parents, even. He just had to get the credits for it.  
And Ezra was good at getting credits.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m beginning to think I may just make this AU a series of oneshots buttt we’ll see.


End file.
